Reaching goals in Malawi

Sunday

Jan 12, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 12, 2014 at 12:14 PM

Travel to a third world country like Malawi presents a number of challenges. There is the usual medical alert about diseases you thought had been eliminated years ago. The warning list alone would give the faint of heart cold feet. The Peace Corps itself has a long application process complete with background and security checks as well as the need for a medical clearance.

Charlie Fiske

Community volunteers from Mbenje village in the Nsanje District of Malawi joined with Peace Corps worker, Kendal Danna to build a nutritional garden for vulnerable children, the elderly and people living with disabilities. Kendal is barely visible standing fourth from the right in the back row. (Charlie Fiske)

Travel to a third world country like Malawi presents a number of challenges. There is the usual medical alert about diseases you thought had been eliminated years ago. The warning list alone would give the faint of heart cold feet. The Peace Corps itself has a long application process complete with background and security checks as well as the need for a medical clearance.

On the average it can take more than a year from the start of the application process to placement in one about 73 locations worldwide. Some lose interest or have circumstances causing a change of heart. Even after a successful acceptance into the Peace Corps there may be delays depending on available placements and funding.

My application process started in late November 2010 and 16 months later, I arrived in Malawi in March 2012. The same long process happened with many in my group and all came with a serious commitment to meet the challenges ahead.

Now twenty two months later and with 30 of the original group remaining, all have gained some insight about how the system works and are quick to offer suggestions worth consideration for future volunteers placed in this country. Months ago I’d invited them to reflect on their experiences. The thoughtful responses are typical of their character and honest reflection of their time serving in Malawi.

US Peace Corps Volunteer Kendal Danna in her own words – “Helping Malawi Reach Their Own Goals“

As a Peace Corps volunteer I, along with more than 150 others have countless hours to reflect on what we do here in Malawi. Thousands worldwide are doing the same. While serving here I’m finding my conclusions have been quite a mix of cynicism and hope. I am not alone.

My biggest concern is whether Peace Corps places volunteers in a position to be efficient and effective. Peace Corps was created as a force to foster international relations at a time when Americans didn’t travel to countries like Malawi. It was a chance to change the image of my country because those living in the developing world had a limited view of Americans and would probably never be able to visit.

The Peace Corps has provided international aid by sending trained, educated Americans to share knowledge and their experiences to combat some major issues plaguing “third world” countries. In today’s world of cell phones, internet, movies and study abroad programs, people around the world have a better chance to know each other in ways unforeseen 50 years ago.

I question whether the Peace Corps is capable of reexamining its mission and goals to suit a world that is more conscious of international development than 50 years ago? Many people in my village area ask me about the conditions of the roads in the U.S., as well as the intricacies of the American education system maybe hoping to find out how to study there. Most often I’m asked if I personally know Beyonce, or 50 Cent, or Obama.

No one has ever questioned whether or not I am a government spy. The world has changed and Peace Corps seems reluctant to change with it.

A very small portion of the total U.S. budget goes toward sending volunteers to countries in need for the sake of development and diplomacy. During our training we are told, “If you do nothing in the next two years except sit on your porch and talk to your neighbors, you’ll be doing 2/3 of your job.”

The technical training implied that we should do more than sit around, but it became clear that as long as you followed the rules and didn’t cause problems, you could get away with spending the majority of your time in your hammock making friends. No one was really going to be checking or making sure that we did anything that could be construed as actual work.

We are asked in reports every four months, what activities we are doing and to estimate the number of people reached with our projects. There are no right answers; there is very little accountability. How much, or how little we choose to do depends on our personal motivation for joining Peace Corps in the first place.

How successful we are depends on how accurately we assessed the needs of our own communities. When we started there were no job descriptions, no expectations from the local community and, for most of us, no real community supervisor. We were told, “Try your best. A lot of things you do will fail; hopefully you’ll feel that some of it was successful when you’re done.”

This attitude made me uncomfortable.

One thing I’ve learned from meeting current and former Peace Corps volunteers from all over the world, every Peace Corps country is run very differently. Every volunteer wants very different things from his or her service. Many volunteers feel supported by an in-country staff that takes a keen interest in what they were doing.

Many feel they were well placed according to their skills in communities where they were wanted. Communities understood how to work with the volunteers. Individual volunteers understand what was expected of them by their Peace Corps supervisors and their host country local workers. My experience has not been the same.

Those experiences are what make thousands of volunteers recommend Peace Corps service to their friends, colleagues, and younger siblings. I don’t know that I could. These experiences make me hopeful that the framework under which Peace Corps works is still relevant today. They are the experiences of those who praise the grassroots level of development and still wholeheartedly believe in the power of small changes.

I have days when I feel like one of them, for brief moments in time, but for the most part I envy them. My cynicism lies in the fact that these experiences aren’t mine and they are not those of many of my friends who serve with the Peace Corps in Malawi.

Based on my service in Malawi I think there is a way to make the process work better for future volunteers who will attempt to accomplish what I and my fellow volunteers couldn’t. We were told that application process is selective and our resumes are reviewed by a country staff who understood the basic needs of communities or organizations requesting a Peace Corps volunteer.

They choose from a large pool of qualified applicants to fill available site locations for the two year stay here. There are a variety of reasons that each of us wanted to join the Peace Corps. Some of those reasons include dedication to work in less developed countries, the desire to do good, career development and exposure to fields that we hope to continue with later. We have personal goals that are varied as each individual volunteer.

However, too often the placement process doesn’t work. Many volunteers are well educated or have experiences making them qualified to work in developing countries. Many know about the needs of the host countries, understand behavior change, HIV programming and community/environmental health, as well as capacity building.

Some come with business training, nursing degrees, or with years of experience in agriculture or teaching capacities. Even those who come fresh out of college have critical thinking skills, energy, passion and enthusiasm with a willingness to learn. They come with a college education. That is more than many Malawians can say after experiencing an education system that often works against them.

Peace Corps volunteers have a unique opportunity to live among the people they are working with. Even when it makes us uncomfortable we are directed to integrate, to gain the opportunity to identify with the community for the success of our projects, as well as for our safety and security within our villages.

We work under specific frameworks for each of our areas – health, education and the environment sectors. The majority of the work is supposed to fall within your primary project framework; for my sector, health, that is HIV/AIDS prevention and education. We also can develop secondary projects which may encompass many things such as malaria intervention efforts, reproductive health, income generating activities, nutrition and gardening.

Peace Corps volunteers have the ability to understand their rural communities at a very different level than others who may come for shorter stays. We live in locations where we experience firsthand some of the daily challenges families face. We are highly visible with the community.

We learn about the underlying issues that hinder development. We begin to understand what can be changed as well as those issues that are beyond our help at this time. This is a core value that I believe truly sets Peace Corps apart from other organizations thus making it special.

This principle convinced me to choose the Peace Corps over other unpaid internships or volunteer work; and it is this idea that frustrates me the most about Peace Corps service. Volunteers are given such an incredible chance to know the people and places that become their home.

We are given the chance to understand some of the real issues that are holding our communities back. We are driven by a passion go help, but often we are left with so little resources or support to really do anything about the problems we discover.

The real question we face is simple “What we are trying to help Malawians accomplish in their own country?” One aspect of our training taught us to focus on system strengthening. If systems are strong they will last even after we have gone. I believe it is in this area that the Peace Corps in Malawi can make the greatest improvements.

The Malawian government has laid out plans for how their health services are supposed to run. The problem always seems to be that either someone stopped paying for it or someone stopped organizing it. Critical to the success of any project is resources and sometimes there seems to be little long term planning to sustain or initiate specific projects.

It seems to me that if the system was actually running the way that it was designed, we wouldn’t need Americans to come and develop ways to teach people about HIV and condoms. There are smart motivated Malawians who already know how to carry on projects -Malawians who are supposed to be doing this work already but can’t because some part of the system seems to have left them without resources.

As a very general rule, many American volunteers are good at problem solving and critical thinking. We’ve been taught since pre-school to look at problems from many angles. We are good at strategic planning and we like efficiency and innovation; if we can think of a way to do something that is easier and faster we want to try it.

Some of my most satisfying moments over the past 21 months have been when I can point out a simple solution to a problem, or ask a question about a process that no one thought to ask. Sometimes the easiest solution to a problem is fresh eyes and enough curiosity.

I came to Africa as a Masters candidate in Public Health, with an understanding of health systems, budgeting, program implementation, and evaluation. I’m not sure that I was ever placed according to those skills.

I, along with many of my fellow Peace Corps colleagues, was placed at a rural health centers chosen by the Ministry of Health. The health center was happy to have me, but they didn’t really know what to do with me. It was never explained to them about my background or how they could utilize my services.

They didn’t know what I was capable of doing or, for that matter, what I couldn’t do for them (“No I’m not a nurse; I’m not allowed to give injections. No, you cannot just show me how to do it”).

I wouldn’t trade my experience living in the village, at a rural health center in a district that has one doctor, a literacy rate of 42%, an HIV prevalence of 16%, where 28 out of 100 new mothers are teenagers and fishermen come into the hospital with crocodile bites. I wouldn’t have learned what I have learned if I had been placed in a city.

I do, however, wish that I had been put in a position to combine what I was learning at the grassroots level with connections to people who create policies and actions that affect change. I would be able to help my neighbors and counterparts make their systems work better. In that sense I believe volunteers are often underutilized.

Our service here fosters us to become advocates to helping with the struggles Malawians face. The Peace Corps has a group of volunteers who are eager to affect real change within their communities, but then doesn’t put them in a position to do so.

Volunteers currently work in almost every district in Malawi. As it exists there is little to no preparation with district stakeholders about the potential help offered by a Peace Corps volunteer in the health field. A greater pairing with district health care officials could be more beneficial to every district where volunteers currently work. A focused, strategic plan for what we are trying to achieve (created in partnership with Malawian stakeholders and in consideration of their own goals) could provide measureable, lasting change for Malawi.

It does come down to having the Peace Corps realistically evaluating not only the qualified skills of its volunteers but clearly establishing project sites that best utilize and identify the talents needed. Initially it was left to me to help my health center understand how best to maximize my experience. Unfortunately, much time is used to determine what needs to be done.

I think volunteers should be expected to work and should be supported. With an emphasis on systems strengthening, volunteers would still be free to complete all the same secondary projects that already take up much of their time. They would still be encouraged to work with small community groups, to plant gardens, to give health talks, and to sit on their porch and make friends.

Without encouragement from the local staff it becomes impossible to try something new even if a new project was a risk or a challenge. It becomes difficult to attempt something on a larger scale, like focus on the health system, when it may go against the way Peace Corps is used to doing things in the past. With the right support and direction we could be better and more effective volunteers.

At the local level the Peace Corps now has a great opportunity to provide the change necessary by having leadership support to encourage volunteers to best utilize their talents and experiences. I am hopeful that others will benefit from my experiences because I feel that change is possible. Change is needs to happen here in Malawi and in Peace Corps worldwide. The challenge is clear. When this happens everyone benefits.

(Kendal is at stationed at the Mbenje Health Center in the Nsanje District as a community health advisor. She is from Lake Geneva, WI)

As we approach the final months of our time in Malawi we’ve started evaluating what we’ve accomplished as well as reflect on projects that remain incomplete. Our legacy will be left for others to finish and our responsibility is to better prepare those who will follow our in footsteps. My hope is that they benefit from opportunities not available to us.

The Peace Corps operation for how we work in Malawi can improve and change for the better. The ultimate beneficiaries are Malawians who have the responsibility to chart the future of their own country. We are fortunate to be part of that process.